Allied bombs 'hit civilians'

Arab refugees fleeing Iraq continue to tell of US bombs exploding in residential areas, killing or wounding civilians or leaving them homeless.

With journalists and other independent observers excluded from both sides of the war, it is impossible to confirm the refugees' stories or the US reports of 'surgical' attacks. Iraq has said that 41 people have been killed and 191 wounded in bombing raids up until Tuesday.

The Iraqi casualty list, contained in a letter to UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, said only eight people had been killed and 46 wounded in Baghdad. It listed five dead and 72 wounded in Basra province, which borders Kuwait and, like Baghdad, has been a principal target of the allied air strikes. It is unclear if the casualties listed were military or personnel or civilian.

'This is a black day,' said Majed Mohammed, an Egyptian car mechanic, who described the scene in Fallujah, a city about 60 miles west of Baghdad, where the allied bombing reportedly has targeted a chemical plant. 'I saw corpses on the main street. We took some of the dead and wounded to Fallujah hospital. There were many children, five-and six-year-olds, among them.'

The refugees reaching this camp at the Jordanian-Iraqi border spoke of serious damage in residential areas next to military, political and industrial sites. Even those who are unsympathetic to President Saddam Hussein such as many of Iraq 's Egyptian contract workers were angry at the bombing.

'What is the sin of the Iraqi people?' one man asked repeatedly. Of the bombing, he said: 'This is total destruction. The skies above Baghdad are red. Revenge should not be taken against Iraq , but Saddam.

'This is not a war,' Mohammed said. 'This is the annihilation of a Muslim people. Yes, I am Egyptian, (but) take your hands off Iraq.'

US forces have said allied pilots are dropping their weapons accurately on military, industrial and political targets and that if the pilots cannot do so, they return to base without having attacked.

'That is all propaganda,' said Mohammed. 'If only military centres were being hit, we would not have been afraid and we would not have come here.'

An Indian construction company executive, Mundar Bey Singh, said he had seen US cruise missiles accurately strike targets in Baghdad. 'The bombing was accurate,' said Mr Singh, who has served as a fighter pilot in the Indian air force. 'Most of the damage was done by the cruise missiles, not the planes.'

A Jordanian, Hamad Said, who had been living in the Kuwaiti city of al-Ahmadi, added that only military targets were being singled out for concentrated bombing in Kuwait: 'We were afraid. We had no lights in our homes. We were so scared we ran to the door of a shelter, but there was no room.'

Issam Mustafa, aged 21, a Jordanian medical student, said that he had been working in the emergency room of Baghdad's Medical City Hospital last Thursday an ambulance arrived with a woman whose left arm had been severed, two children with severe burns and a 14-year-old boy, all injured by shrapnel.

'I was not on duty over the weekend but I heard ambulances every half-hour,' Mr Mustafa added.

Eight refugees spoke of buildings that had collapsed, killing and wounding residents inside. A powdered milk factory was destroyed in the Akarkouf district of Baghdad, one said. Iraqi newspapers have been carrying pictures of the damaged milk factory.

The only Iraqi at the Jordanian border on Tuesday was Muthanna Abu Ahmad, aged 45, a taxi driver who has been shuttling passengers from Baghdad to Amman for Dollars 750 each.

He said a three-storey house was hit in Mahmoudiyah, north of Baghdad, and eight people in it killed. Food and water shortages, no electricity, and lack of standing space in bomb shelters have driven people out of Baghdad.

An American, Bruce Wolcott, aged 41, arrived here with three others, members of an anti-war group. He said he had heard attacks by B-52 bombers that reminded him of being in Vietnam.